A few weeks ago I blogged about Andrea Levy’s Windrush novel Small Island and the use she makes of food to signal the discomfort and alienation the Jamaican immigrant Hortense feels in post-war London as she struggles to make a typical English dish – egg and chips.
Food plays a similarly important role in the immigration experience of the protagonist of Colm Toibin’s novel Brooklyn. Winner of the 2009 Costa novel award, Brooklyn tells of the young Eilis Lacey who leaves her small provincial town in 1950s Ireland, where work is scarce, to travel to Brooklyn in New York to make a new life. Continue reading “Food: the immigrant’s experience”